Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations. It is not much matter if things do not turn out well.

Nothing shows one who his friends are like prosperity and ripe fruit.

Nature is entirely indifferent to any reform. She perpetuates a fault as persistently as a virtue.

To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life - this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.

Isolation breeds conceit.

The principal value of a garden is not understood. It is not to give the possessors vegetables and fruit (that can be better and cheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patience and philosophy, and the higher virtues - hope deferred, and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation, and sometimes to alienation.

If you do things by the job, you are perpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour, you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not.